Thoughts on Happiness

by B.J. Stolbov

Living in a foreign country is an opportunity to learn about a different culture, a different way of seeing and responding to the world.  It provides an opportunity to immerse yourself in new customs and traditions, and to see what really matters and is important to people around the world. It is also an opportunity to examine, from a distance, your own customs and traditions and, most important, your own cultural assumptions.

I was born and raised and lived in the United States all my life, until I was almost 60 years old. Then, I joined the Peace Corps and was assigned to the Philippines, to Quirino Province in northern Luzon, to the municipality of Cabarroguis, to the barangay (barrio) of Zamora. There, I learned some things from Filipinos about happiness.

Eyes of curiosity, Luzon, Philippines. Photo by Daniel Peckham via Flickr CCL

Before I start telling you about my discoveries, I need to offer this disclaimer. What follows is full of generalizations. For the sake of brevity and for effect, I have purposely taken out all the “sometimes,” “occasionallys,” and “almosts.” You can add them and I won’t mind – almost. 

I believe that truth is circular, actually spherical, like the world. You can turn truth around, and even upside down, and still find some truths in it.  When I moved to the other side of the world, the truths that I was raised with, that I had always held dear, that I thought were the only possible truths, were turned around, especially what I learned in the last three years about happiness and success.

In the U.S., success is happiness. If you have money, a good job, a solid place to live, a car, a computer, a television, or a big-screen television, the latest electronic equipment, and a full-funded retirement account, you are successful. You can be happy, proud of yourself, of what you’ve accomplished, and of the things you own.

In the Philippines, it’s another way around.  Happiness is success. If you have good health, a good family, parents, spouse, children, relatives, trusted friends, supportive neighbors, pleasant companions at work, a community of people who like you and whom you like, you are successful. Happiness is who you are and with whom you are. Happiness isn’t something that you will get only in the future; and happiness isn’t dependent upon what you do for a living or what you own.

Happiness isn’t something you get after you get everything else; happiness is something you have before your get everything else.

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Truffle Hunting in Alba, Italy: Tasty, tricky and sometimes tense.

by Fyllis Hockman

The dog's tail wagged impatiently. Lady -- a small, nondescript, white and brown mutt -- raced ahead to the oak tree, sprinted back and forth, nose thrust into the ground, then triumphantly started digging with gusto. Looking up with an air of satisfaction, Lady was handsomely rewarded before her master carefully scraped the loosened dirt with his pick. The five visitors observing the ritual looked on expectantly. Using his fingers to gingerly explore further, the truffle hunter delicately removed his treasure: a large, walnut-size white truffle, one of the epicurean riches of Alba, a gem of a city in the Piedmont region of northwest Italy.

Okay, let me just say that up to now the closest I had come to a truffle was in a Whitman’s Sampler box and it was covered with chocolate. And I’m pretty sure it had never been routed out by a dog. This truffle hunting is a respected art form in Alba, and proper training of the dogs is at its heart. Any breed can aspire to the job, but selection depends upon its resume. It must have a good nose (a trait the dogs presumably share with the region's prestigious wines), and trainers can ascertain that after three days. Once the dogs show promise, they attend the Barot University of Truffle Hunting Dogs, in operation since 1880, for two to three months of specialized training. Graduate school is optional.

Now let's talk truffles. Sure, to the uninitiated, it may just be a foul fungus, but to the gourmand, it represents the ultimate in gastronomic delights. It is judged by size, color, shape, texture, aroma - some would say offensive olfactory onslaught; others, fragrance of the gods -- and its overall perfection. There's a lot to be said for this smelly little mushroom.

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INSIDE EGYPT: Can We Choose Which Blood to Grieve?

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is a continuation of an ongoing series of insights and dispatches from Egyptian contributor Manal S. Kelig, a devoted mother, wife, tour operator, and peace promoter living in Cairo, Egypt. Our hearts go out to Manal and the people of Egypt during this difficult period.

by Manal S. Kelig

For the past 2 years Egyptians found themselves regularly facing heart-breaking choices!

When the revolution took place on 25 Jan 2011, I was not in a status to rejoice or condemn. Just one day earlier my late father had to undergo a serious operation as he was diagnosed with colon cancer.

Celebrations in Tahrir Square after Omar Soliman's statement that concerns Mubarak's resignation. February 11, 2011 via Wikipedia CCL

For the next two weeks we were having our own stressful events where the hospital we were in was attacked by thugs. Doctors and nurses could not come to work. Medical supplies were not delivered to the hospital. As we ran out of options and danger continued, we were forced to check out of the hospital with my father in this critical condition and have him home nursed by my sister who has no medical background except her amateur medical readings. As his condition declined, taking my father to a chemo session was over 7 hours ordeal in Cairo traffic that was continuously blocked by demonstrations and sit-ins. In April 2011 my father passed away.

While our lives were made hard due to the unstable political conditions, and as I had some friends celebrate the revolution and others dam it, I realized no matter what I have gone through I will not point fingers at any of them and blame them on what we had to face.

Our family like many others was a casual victim of the events. When we were attacked in the hospital we were not defending a cause, or chose to go in a confrontation. It was just our fate.

I knew very well many other Egyptians in different ways would be in that position in the coming period.

A New Egypt with No Leader

For the past 12 years I have regularly said in my lectures, “ No one knows what will happen when Mubarak dies, but I can predict there will be no wide acceptance of his son to take over and the different opposition parties will make sure it does not happen, but hopefully without violence. “

Then came the 2011 revolution, and like the other uprisings in Arab countries, it was driven by the dissatisfaction and anger of a new generation who formed over 60 % of Egypt’s population.

But the energy of 2011's revolutionaries was squashed by the power and organization of the already established forces in Egypt, particularly the earlier Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, the 80 years old Moslem Brotherhood movement and some remnants of the Mubarak regime.

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Heritage and Whisky in Scotland's Orkney Islands

by Frank Demain

I was very excited to discover that one branch of my family had its roots in the Orkney Islands, a handful of miles off the north coast of Scotland. It seems that my great grandfather was a master mariner, no less. As I had already acquired a taste for that magnificent Orkney malt whisky, Highland Park, it was not too big a step to decide that a trip to the Orkneys was required to investigate further my Orcadian roots and to visit the distillery just outside Kirkwall. My wife, essentially a gin-and-tonic drinker, does admit to liking the occasional wee dram and so it was not too difficult to persuade her to join me on my voyage of genealogical and sensory discovery.

Fortunately – and unusually for that part of the world - the sea was calm as we crossed on the ferry from Scrabster, a few miles west of John o’ Groats, the northernmost point on the Scottish mainland, towards the port of Stromness on the largest of the Orkney islands, confusingly called Mainland. Because of the flatness of the sea we were able to pass close to the Old Man of Hoy, a magnificent 449 feet red sandstone sea stack, perched on a plinth of basalt. From the sea it looks truly formidable and, despite its closeness to civilisation, it was not until 1966 that it was first climbed, by a team led by the famous British mountaineer Chris Bonnington. There and then I decided that my visit would have to include a trip to view the stack from the bottom on the landward side.

Old Man of Hoy sea stack, Orkney Islands, Scotland.

We enjoyed the warm, friendly welcome at the Highland Park distillery, and we had the joy of sampling rather older, finer bottlings than those to which our wallets normally extend. Smooth, peaty, rich, warming. 

A visit to the helpful people at the Orkney Family History Society, housed in the handsome Orkney Library in Kirkwall, provided some useful information. However, my ancestral investigations proved a little less definitive than I had hoped. Even now I have been unable to discover the origins of the elusive Betsy Birnie, maternal grandmother of my captain, Walter Weir Wilson. And sadly, I found that grannie’s highland home no longer exists on the narrow coastal plain on the east side of the island of Hoy. 

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Seeking Retreat in Asturias, Spain

by Elyn Aviva

I needed a break. Big time. I’d been doing too much for too long. Traveling. Writing. Doing. Coming up with projects, ideas. More doing. And doing some more. I loved it all, and I loved my husband, Gary, but I needed a break. Alone. And somewhere preferably in Spain, where we live. 

I started scanning last-minute Internet offers. My idea was a comfortable little cabin in the woods; someone bringing me wholesome food; and occasionally taking short, shady strolls through verdant vegetation.

Suddenly a vision floated before my eyes. My Camino de Santiago pilgrim friend Judy Colaneri and her husband, Juan Carlos, own Fuentes de Lucia, a “boutique” hotel/retreat center in the mountains of northwestern Spain. They had been asking me to visit for years. I checked the website. It wasn’t an isolated cabin in the woods, but it looked like a charming place, located in a beautiful Asturian Natural Park.

A “dynamic yoga retreat” was scheduled for the week I wanted to be there. I wasn’t sure I was interested in “dynamic” or  “yoga”—it’s been too many years since I sat on the floor or managed to mold into an asana—but the retreat part sounded good. 

I emailed Judy and received an immediate reply. In fact, she wrote, she had already put my name on the door of Room #7. That’s auspicious, I thought. After all, according to the Bible, the Creatrix rested on the seventh day. And that’s just what I wanted to do.

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A Musical Journey Through Spain

by Jessica Kitt 

When I moved to Barcelona, my knowledge of Spanish music was as narrow as that of most expats travelling to Spain:  flamenco, castanets, and … flamenco? However, as my two-year journey throughout the country proved, there is a lot more to Spanish music than just flamenco. My first partial relief of ignorance came from a student I was teaching from the region of Asturias in the North of Spain. After about the first year of teaching British English classes in Spain, I developed a certain odd nostalgia for home and my Irish heritage.

Coming from quite a traditional background, with a family of musicians and Irish dancers, I was used to being surrounded by all things Irish. Frequently, I took to listening to my father and uncle’s traditional Irish band on my MP3 player before bed. One day, during a class with my Asturian student, I indulged in a discussion about Irish music and all the “exotic” instruments we had from uilleann pipes (Irish bagpipes) to bodhrans (hand held drums). During this discussion, my student informed me that the music of both Asturias and Galicia in the North is Spain was surprisingly similar to both Irish and Celtic music. I promptly downloaded some of this music and was shocked by how similar it was. 

Traditional Asturian drummers and pipers. Photo by austinevan via flickr ccl.

This similarity between Irish and Northern Spanish music was again proven to me when I travelled to the North of Spain to work on an organic farm for a month.

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